Messages - Andrew

Okay, yeah, as is evident by the other topic I made, I'm redoing the message system. It'll still look similar to what we have, but it'll be a lot less confusing for me to work on and upkeep. Not sure if I'll do the in-line replies, like we have now, but I might support it down the line. Might even be possible to do something similar to what the BM view is, after the switch, if people want it. If you want to add to the discussion on that, I ask everyone do it in the other topic.

Anyways, I want that because it seems like leaving a fundamental part of the game broke while adding yet another thing would be a bad move. I might even do a stripped down version of it for an in-game message board between users, but that's down the line.

After that, Activities and Places. Possibly at the same time. Activities will be the branch-point for a bunch of inter-character events, from duels, balls, tournaments, etc. If you all have ideas what you'd like added, please let me know.

id is a system field.conversation is the relevant conversation.character is the particular character in question.active is whether or not they're actively a participant (they get new messages or no)start is when they had permissions to see messagesend is when they lost permissions to see messagesignore is whether or not they want notificationswrite means they can send new messagesmanage lets them add/remove people (except the owner?)owner is who started the conversation and has full rightsunread is how many unread messages they have in the conversationThis means that you can add someone for a bit, send them some messages, have them send some messages, then remove them, talk more, add them again, and they can once again send/receive, etc.

That means that they can read some old messages, but not ones they weren't present for.

It may be possible to have the game alert you to direct messages on the character list, and I can imagine how I'd implement it (as a character attribute rather than querying all conversations with only 2 participants or no group association) but it's not something I'd like to launch this new setup with. That said, when I add it, that means it'll probably load that page a fair bit faster compared to when all your characters have even a single unread message, but still, not a launch feature.

Mmmm.... I was thinking after I posted that it'd need a fourth table to track what it's associated to (a realm, a settlement, a place, an event, etc.), but that still keeps it slimmer than what we have now. Even flags would still only be a fifth table, compared to the 9 we have now. I'm thinking for system controlled conversations, join/leave will be automatic. This will handle things like realms and places n the like. For manual convos, I definitely want a join/leave ability, and it shouldn't be hard to do.

Thus far we have the following tables (not counting flags):Conversations - Tracks conversation topic, start date, convo-level settings, and any system info, with relations to who started it, which group it's for (realm, settlement, etc.), and who has permissions to it.Messages - Tracks message subject (if we want it, setting perhaps?), who sent it, when they sent it, individual message contents, and (maybe) what message it is in reply to (if we want it?)Permissions - Tracks who is active in the conversation (current participants) and who has access when. For active participants, tracks their rights to a conversation.Groups - Associates a conversation to a particular in-game entity, be it a realm, house, place, etc. System controlled.

And because I'll forget this later, I'm going to post some shorthand logic on how to grab all messages a person sees below:

So, i've been looking at the conversations system the last few days when I've had time, and the more I look at it, the more I come to think that modifying it to track who has access when to a conversation would be more of a pain than it's worth, based on how it's setup. You might expect that it just track which user has access to what conversations and what messages are in them, when it really tracks which user has access to which conversation and message metadatum and which conversations and messages those relate to, repsectively, and which have what relations to what users. Which makes it a but of a tangled mess, and one I'm not sure it's worth me sitting down trying to untangle.Thus, I'm entertaining creating a new conversation system, and would like to know what you'd like it to include. I'm entertaining this because if I write one from the ground up, it becomes far easier to track who has access to what messages when, along with fixing most of the problems the current one has (like, how to handle people having access to part of a conversation that they've been since kicked out of--which I've already got a good idea on how to handle).I'm thinking a rewrite will consist of 3 main parts: conversations, messages, and permissions. Conversations and messages will work mostly how they do now, but permissions will double both as a "who manages this convo" and a "who has access to what messages". When someone joins, they get added to a conversation's permissions with a given start and end period. When permissions change, the old one's get ended and a new one added.If you're wondering why there's no "User" for this new system, that's because it'll tie straight into M&F rather than be a quasi-dependency like we have now.Thoughts? Input?

I have no problem with adding fuel as a resource neither tbh. Either from charcoal or coal mine. Maybe even replace the Goods with since that resource is useless.

I doubt I'll remove Goods. They just appear useless because they don't really have a building that uses them, mostly because once something is built it's basically free to maintain. If anything, I'd be more likely to make buildings actually require resource upkeep, meaning Goods will become valuable due to being needed by not only some higher end fortifications, but also resource producers like the mine and straight military equipment makers.

If we're looking at what activity would be best for the life of the game, it's going to be tournaments, isn't it? It hits a lot of points - a reason for people to interact; a reason to draw people together in groups; an element of competition/conflict; and potential for variety (in terms of different types of competitions within a tournament framework).

I kind of figured as much, to be honest. It'll need the gear overhaul, skills, and activities to be functional in a way that isn't just RNG. Probably not soon.

That being said, we wouldn't necessarily have to slavishly follow the form of historical tournaments. This is meant to be a (low) fantasy world, so there's no reason why we couldn't come up with a event that's some melting pot of a medieval tournament, the ancient olympics games, roman chariot racing, and middle eastern horse racing (just as examples).I'd go with something a bit more imaginative than some military threat from an NPC faction (or a GM controlled faction). Bringing bandits back could achieve that sort of thing.

If you've ideas on what sort of events to include in a tournament, have at. I'm listening (reading).As for a military threat from an NPC faction, well, they'd probably only be threatening if you threaten them. I don't know though. Part of why Beluaterra on BM was fun was because you knew the monsters or undead or whatever would come eventually. It was understood. Which is probably why they'd never seriously threaten the core area of the game we have now, because I don't feel like that's something that should be forced on players. If anything, I'd probably setup a new continent that the new faction inhabits, with some specific rules on how they work.

In terms of what the something more imaginative would be, I'll need to think about that for a while and come back with ideas. But one possibility for a world event would be to create a new land mass (maybe have it rise from the seas) that's on a timer before it disappears (sinks back under the seas). This land mass could have several ancient magical 'power nodes' on it that realms could compete to control. The realm that controls the most nodes before the land mass sinks then gets some form of bonus or gifts of the ancients for a while afterwards. The catch could be that any characters still on the land mass when it disappears die, introducing a risk and reward threat. This would allow for fighting that wouldn't lead to realms being destroyed as the fighting could just be confined to the land mass (if the realms agree it).

Disappearing and reappearing islands would be a pain in the ass to code, to be honest. Also, the gamey concept of that sorta conflicts with the concept of M&F and how everything has meaning and every mark left can be found later.

Just adding in world events isn't going to help much at all. The problems with the game are the difficulty with contacting people, getting replies, getting them to set up permissions so you can visit towns. This, added to the time it takes to actually go anywhere makes the whole process hardly worth it. How are most people going to hear about these world events and actually go and interact in any sort of timely manner?

I don't know how to make people talk back. As for getting around, well, I have ideas.

For example, if you turn up to almost all towns in the game and want to get in to interact, then it's such a rigmarole to get permissions organized that it's just not worth asking at most places on the map, so hardly anyone even bothers.

The GameRequest system can solve this. It could be setup to allow temporary permissions or even permanent ones, but permanent ones are why the permissions system is a thing. It'd just need someone to code it up and tie it in. We could also finish the permissions system as well. You can also use the same GameRequest system to support invites, or pre-approved access to people. It was designed, to a small degree, with that kind of stuff in mind.

The permissions system is really broken, and it's a major PITA to do anything with it. Maybe the default permissions shouldn't be to disallow everyone from doing everything, since many new players won't set any permissions, therefore most towns are locked down by default unless you can get your vassals to follow complex instructions.

Might be worth having permission templates. You could make one for a realm that says specific lists grant entry, other lists can manage buildings, etc., and the player just needs to go to the permission screen, select a template, and hit apply. Hm, that's actually an idea I like, and haven't thought of before.

Oh yeah, very much so. The message system is awful. It's always been awful from the day it was designed. All that was really needed for this game was a simple reworking of an email system (i.e. the Battlemaster message system for those who get the reference, which is mostly perfect for this type of game). Something that's been tried, tested, and proved to work.

Added in to this, the message system actually discourages mass communication, because if you send out a message realm-wide or across your whole contacts list (for example) and a player has 10 characters in one realm or within your contact list they receive the message at each of those characters and need to click multiple times to dismiss it from all characters after reading it once. That's insane. I remember very well that several realms earlier in the game's life actively instructed players never to send a message realm-wide exactly because of this issue. All that's ever been needed to solve this problem is a simple 'mark this message as read for all my characters' button in the same way there's that to dismiss information about an event.

This problem with the message system is part of the reason why it's so hard for anyone to know what's going on world wide. If you could send out mass communication messages without spamming people across multiple characters, I bet people would be much more inclined to spread news.

Pretty sure I fixed that. It's up to players to enable it though. Hm. Could setup a toggle to enable it on character gen though. Ideas. Doing it as a "mark this as read for all my chars" button I didn't implement because it's not as easy as it sounds.

I had some other stuff here about the message system, but looking at the code for it now that I can sorta say I know what the heck PHP is, let me get back to you. I may be updating it next, now that I look at it. We'll see. Depends how intensive I think this'll be.

I do have a question, when being added to a conversation, should you get the last few messages, or not? Maybe only those from the last turn? Also, would notifications (as system messages) be preferred when people are added/removed? Input requested.

Variations in metal was something I talked with Weaver about a long time ago as something to possibly add. Along with changing how items were made. Making it more interesting. I don't know how I feel about it anymore, but I'm not going to remove it as a concept. My main concern is the mixing of resources bit. If anything, I'd say we go a step towards fantasy metals that appear very rarely. Some ideas are here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyMetals We could always just make up our own, too. Weavium, anyone?

I'm not against adding fuels as a resource, with the option to build a charcoal burner in order to convert wood to fuel, though.

The main problem with the economy system is that it's straight up something you can just ignore. Which I'm not saying you should be forced to be intimate, but if we want to push towards politics, we need things to create political strife.

If it's an idea we like, I can figure out the database part of it later. I'm pretty good at figuring that stuff out, normally.

That said, I'm feeling something for adding activities in. So, question: which one should I add first when I do add them? Don't worry about the extra work for them, I just want to know what people think the first one needs to be.

Lastly, if there was to be a GM event or faction or something, what would you have it be? Feel free to be as wild as you want, I'm looking for some world-event to generate activity and interaction.

Alright, so I've been following Discord discussion and reading the replies here and thinking about this, and this is what I'm thinking.Might & Fealty, at least from what I've encountered is mostly a platform for Role Playing. It's about the characters, who they are, where they're from, what they've done, etc.

How can we improve role playing and make this a game that encourages cooperative storytelling (as such role playing is)?

Change how new players arrive to the game. How they're first welcomed into the IC world. Idea: "Gateway Cities". This would require Places, initially, and later Complexes (to be really good), but it would remove the automatic association of knight hood upon arrival. You would still be able to become part of a realm, possibly fairly quickly, but it'd be something the player initiates. Gateway Cities, as I'm calling them for lack of a better term, would mostly be capitals, but it's possible I'll run a neutral, GM one as well, where multiple realms or lords or guilds or whatever, could openly recruit as well as assist new players. Places, and especially player complexes, would allow you to very thoroughly immerse someone in the lore. We'll want a secondary, non-lore heavy way though as well, as an alternative, I think.

Add in support to conversations to properly add and remove people, as well as take a detailed look as to how it functions and document it somewhere (I've a pretty good idea in my head, but...)

Finish Places, setup dynamic conversations for you "locally" wherever you happen to be, so it's easier to have walk-in/walk-out roleplay awareness.

Add support for multi-user activities and have them take place at a Place or Room or City or Region or whatever.

Guilds, religions, associations, etc.

Finish publications. Add books and flyers. Tie publications to either a building or place (either is doable, as the game tracks every building built everywhere individually). Building a repository should be a thing.

However, M&F does have people who enjoy the military aspect of the game, but the general consensus is that it needs fixed. Here's my ideas for that.

Tweak the map to have more natural borders. If a river runs through the edge of a region, why doesn't the region stop at the river? Mountains should be dangerous and slow, if you're not on a road.

Add more map. Maybe add too much map. Add so much map that it's always an option to just go build an empire somewhere. (after we tweak how food supplies work anyways)

Require bridges to either need mutual consent from neighbors OR military action--Why ask, when you can just make your soldiers build one? If one is built by force, it should be something you hear about though.

No more First Ones leading soldiers. Directly anyways. Mortals can be commanded to go to a location, and you can plot their course, but there needs to be a way to have soldiers clashing while keeping it fun(ish) on both sides. At the least, it shouldn't feel like one side doesn't have an opportunity to respond.

Sieges. So very much sieges. It's too quick to take settlements now. A well fortified city should be a massive pain for an attacking army. It shouldn't just be an option to starve them out in a real life week. Rework how fortifications are factored when we have sieges though. A wall at 100% is, well, a wall. A wall at 90% might have a hole in it, with a lot of soldiers guarding it. But a wall at 50%? Pfft. It's half a pile of rubble at that point. They need to be investments though, and it should be a thing to only minimally damage a wall. Castles and fortresses are WAY too easy to build in M&F, and historically, could bankrupt entire kingdoms during their construction, which could last upwards of a decade. While I think 2.5 real years might be a bit much (by at least a few months ), these should definitely be long-term things. Costly to build AND repair.

Home-field advantages. Soldiers, especially local soldiers, should be more effective overall. Not only do they know the land better, it's the land they're from. On the flipside, "away game" soldiers should take a noticeable hit at effectiveness. If it's more than a few regions away, what do they have to gain themselves?

Rework supply. Sure, you could steal from the countryside, but this shouldn't be the standard, and it should be something that pisses people off (rather than, "that's just how the game works"). Add military supply buildings, make them not contribute to the economy, but act as a means to allow soldiers of the realm or a sub realm or even specific lords to funnels supplies from them to it. I feel like supply line should be somewhat automatic, overall though.

Past that, the economy does need looked at.

Trade changes. It shouldn't be always instant, there should be both time and delay involved. And part of that also means we can make the map more interesting and lived in (one of it's biggest flaws, honestly). Trade with a region more than a region or two away should take time, and I'd like it to generate actual actors on the map. Caravans transporting the goods back and forth. This would also mean you'd need to have a route, and could be used to force the build up of port cities (as we could make that a transition that isn't automatic).

There should be some sort of ledger of what trade changed how when and when new trades are added, etc. Might just do this in a txt file the game writes to though, to be honest.

Rework trades to understand what percent of a resource was sent, and add fail conditions to them. So if you send 100 food of your original 1000 food to a place, the game realizes that if you have less than like 600 of it left, that it should drop it to 10% of whatever it has, rather than whatever it does now. And that if you have less than 300 people, pause it altogether.

I do kind of like Cipheron's tax idea. It keeps it within the control of hte players without forcing it on people. Hm.

Rework equipment to be specific items created rather than man hours stored. Allow people to tweak what is made. Add more items for variety, and enforce resource requirements. Like Cipheron says above, this would make these things directly tradeable. Very tempted to add a subtle, slight variation to things as well, as to how effective items are. Hm. I'd like to do that without a table that has a hundred million rows tracking every dagger in the game though. :\ Not that I think the server would care, just a personal preference for me. Hm.

Thoughts thus far? Comments? Concerns? Please share.I'll probably work on Places next though, to see if I can finish them.

Realms in general need finished. The entire law system, while existing, does nothing and can't be interacted with.

I've been thinking for several days now what I want to work on next, as a "big project", for the game, and I've not really been able to reach a solid conclusion. A lot of that I think stems from not being certain where the game should end up. Is M&F a strategy game with a side of RPG and city-building, a city-sim with a helping of turn-based strategy and roleplay, or a role playing game with city building and military aspects in it's bag of holding?

Now, I do have plans for what I'll do next, namely taking another go at finishing Places, as well as implementing the GameRequest System in more places in the game, but past that, I need your help in understanding what you see Might & Fealty as. Maybe it's one of the three I listed above. Maybe it's something else entirely.

Please let me know, both what you see it as/use it as, as well as how I can make it a better experience for you.

The draft feature list for 1.2 is above, for the curious. Once I complete that list, I'll take a look to see if there is anything small/quick I can finish from the larger TODO list, before pushing it all live. I'm pretty confident in saying that it'll be pushed live this month, now that I've got both Houses and Game Requests being made properly.

There are basically two ways that games traditionally create player attachment to characters - on an emotional level (the character has or develops some story that makes the player attached to them); or by making the character more valuable as you progress through the game (new skills, etc) - or, of course, by some combination of the two.

My suggestion would be to allow characters to gain something as they go along (experience; abilities; skills; or some thing of that sort). When you create a new character it's a blank slate but becomes more valuable as you go along. Then players wouldn't consider characters to be so disposable and spamming new characters wouldn't be an easy option.

I'd suggest things like giving characters a bonus to settlement production; a bonus in battle; and so on depending on their past actions - i.e. charcters actually have to do something to earn experience (in the form of players clicking options while playing them). They wouldn't gain experience just passively. That may mean that people who really focus on development of a few characters might then actually gain advantages over players who just spam large numbers of disposable characters. Possibly, you could also make it so that experience/skills degrade if they are not used for a time. That might somewhat guard against the creation of super-characters who become amazing at everything by being rotated through different duties so they max out experience in all areas.

I'm all for stats, but I know a few people have been against them. This is something we'd need to sit down and really figure out before we start implementing them. We'll need some sort of stat system before I implement duels and tournaments and the like though. Personally, I'm for some sort of infinite-yet-diminishing system, where 10 vs 9 is a greater gap than 100 vs 99 which is itself a greater gap than 1000 vs 999. But I'd also be liable to code a chance for a ridiculous victory (skill 1 triumphing over skill 1000) just because.

Quote

Also, it would be a help if the trait system actually worked. Part of the reason it was introduced was to make characters different from each other, but it does no good unless fully implemented.

True. I think if I touch the trait system though, I'll likely start over from scratch on it. Add more traits, make it more diverse. Code in some special combos. Stuff like that. Might even add some special ones that are regularly obtainable.

Quote

Maybe having more achievements would help?

I'm game. Tell me what I should make an achievement! A lot of them are just one-off checks, so they should be pretty easy to do.

Quote

Focus on things that 'build' character./family legacy.eg. a family crest and related.make that cheaper and more encouraging to get.It adds more diversity if people can have banners.All are nobility or first ones after all, not bandits, and most houses had some banner/shield/crest identification.

Houses having crests will be in the next update. This code is already finalized and tested.

Quote

Houses could perhaps marry to get more benefits of some sort. eg. to have a 'kid' in the family you need marriage between houses, else its just another independent character.

I'd like to not add any complicated features with the initial release, as it'll just draw out the development time needlessly. As it stands, you can make and edit a house, apply to join a house, and manage applicants to your house. Down the line, I'd like a way to merge houses, create cadet houses (already in the code, actually), split cadet houses off into their own (family feuds). There might even be code to auto-assign new children to a house upon creation, but I'm not sure. I'll have to look.

Quote

I used to be exited for this game and was even responsible for introducing some of the game's original hero funders when it started, they no longer play. We dont even talk about this shit anymore. Its a bad topic.

I hold on, hoping for better days, but like bmaster, its been years of no improvement.I consider deleting often. Losts a couple of large realms and many friends in this due to powerplayers storming through.

It's unfortunate that you think there's been no improvement. Unlike BM, which has 3-5 people coding, I'm a one man team here, but I've managed to keep pace with their own developments. I will admit, a lot of my work has been refining existing systems, or laying the groundwork for future ones, rather than big, flashy new features. I taught myself PHP by coding this game, and as a few people will attest, I've gotten a lot better over the nearly 2 years I've been at it.

At some point I plan on inviting old players back to the game to check it out again, when I'm confident they'll enjoy it and immediately be able to tell it's not the M&F they remember, but something better. We're not there yet, and won't be for a while I imagine, but people sticking around to help me figure out what to do (or even coding themselves, if they know how or want to learn), will help us get there sooner.

Quote

The game only rewards powerplay or pay to win for those spending credits.you then have more nobles and towns than many free players and can can overpower any realm alone even.This has chased many of our players away from the game and left horrible review or taken down good reviews actually bothering to mention the game.

Quote

Picture this scenario for newbies. you start off in some realm, or alone and are given say a town to manage. great. A year later (real time, if you stuck around) that town should be somewhat ok with a few buildings, maybe walls.You may have had a battle or two.

Then comes a power player wih multiple characters and takes over your towns that you built up because he has many more towns and resulting troops (paid account) vs. his few free-play settlements.

Sure you could spend another 2/3 years tryng to get towns back and such, or just quit game and go play something newer that came out - so many choises out there and often free games handed out on occasion if you know where to look. Why bother with this really?

I do want to create a system that makes it harder to lose settlements. So people aren't so quick to lose all they've invested. I want players to build stories and lore for their lands, and I want that to be possible to lose, but not easily so. If you quit, in time, your mark will be erased, but if your town is invaded, well, why should it just magically forget you? That's just wrong, but there's no silver bullet to fix it, as far as I can tell. I'm tempted to add an occupation system, that grants occupiers certain privileges while maintaining the previous lord's role. My concern with that though, is you'd need some mechanic to eventually force your demands on an opponent, because if not they could simply just refuse to ever accept your terms (and thus prevent the attackers from EVER gaining a true lordship).

Quote

Summary: by all means, reward paying customers with props or things (maybe a special building/palace) for their characters, but not with 'power' or such that unbalances the playing field or you'll only have their clones left in the end. Go back to the drawing board and create a 'fun' game for all. And wipe the dungeon minigame, nobody plays that.

Hm... It'd not be hard to bring the character limits down, and grandfather existing accounts in to their current ones, but doing that means the people who want more will just make more accounts. And I'd prefer to not have to spend my time hunting people with more than there allowed number of accounts.

I like the dungeons, for what it's worth. And they function, so there's no real reason to remove them. Tempted to code some unique achievements in for them, actually. I'd love to see someone fight a dragon, to be honest.

"The fortress-town of Sudenbourg, originally called Vis Requis, has been ruled by the Marquess Alphonse ""*the Fish*"" Peisson since 15-29-6. It serves as the capital town of the surrounding region; both of the Baronie von Niedertiefland and the March of Randland.

Many of the inhabitants of Sudenbourg suffer a harsh existence; rough men bred from a rough life. Industry is functional, though a lack of resources significantly reduces productivity, while encouraging ingenuity. Weaving, hunting, leather-working and scavenging remain strong industries for Sudenbourg. What metals are scavenged are used to maintain a small, though respectable, blacksmithing industry, while the limited supplies severely hamper any serious endeavors by the local armorers.

Outside the gates, a large population of poorer folk and laborers form a ramshackle slum, lightly protected by mud, clay, wood and flagstone entrenchments. Farmers grow what they can in one of the last fertile locations at the border of the Western Confederation's wastelands. Many of the remaining laborers tend to the small forestry industry, while many more find themselves in the salvage pit, breaking rocks and broken equipment into a trickle of usable metals.

The walls of Sudenbourg are visibly less impressive than the wealthier parts of the world. While predominantly cut stone, clay and flagstone are used in layers. Wooden 'spikes' protrude from the walls in places to deter siege equipment, while many of the battlements are also of wood construction. Burgundy banners holding the crests of Randland, Niedertiefland and the Marquess himself hang over the gates and from the wooden towers dotting the walls.

Inside the walls, things are much better. While still not wealthy by any means, broad streets and well constructed buildings of flagstone, wood and clay crowd most parts of the city. Several minor markets across the different quarters absorb much of the hustle and bustle, while a surprisingly pleasant city plaza keeps the governmental and religious buildings close.

Beyond the plaza, a smaller, though better constructed, wall separates Sudenbourg's keep and major military buildings from the rest. Hardy militia men are constantly training and shuffling around the city."

Due to poor soil type in the area surrounding Syrupleaf, traditional farming is unproductive and crop choice is limited. However, this hasn't stopped the people of Syrupleaf from taking efforts to establish communal gardens for a special vegetable called "sweet beet." Concentrated use of watering and fertilizing (primarily using horse manure from Otramold) in these communal gardens leads to small plots of relatively productive soil used to grow the sweet beet.

While edible, the beet itself is bitter and unappetizing, but the crop is primarily cultivated for the sugary taste of the oil obtained from grounded up sweet beet leaves. As such, the largest building in Syrupleaf is the local windmill, devoted entirely to the grinding of these leaves.

With those out of my way, my top three picks are....

#3: Otramold (2037)...

Quote

Otramold is nothing more than a quiet, quaint, lazy village on the Steelhold countryside. Nothing about Otramold particularly stands out, but the people here seem friendly enough and there are always a few people in the local tavern up for a game or two of cards if you catch them between or after shifts.

Aside from all this, it seems the populace utilize the inactive military riding ground as a space to gather for horse shows and one can see many small stables scattered around the village.

#2: Mizhpole (2920)...

Quote

Mizhpole is a bustling and ever-so lively town. In taverns, inns, and bars people can often be heard singing or seen dancing. Other than that, it has a distinct look, almost made to look older and to replicate - with a twist - the old buildings of Ravenmark. It simply has a more rustic feeling. Shops and business are flourishing and the walls are in near-perfect condition. The men who roam the streets as the guard have a usually look, they're either on horses with light armor or on the ground with a mix of heavier armors, many of them have recurved or strong bows. Many men are also armed with a mix of halberds, maces, and sabers, almost all of them have shields just in case.

Yet in the center is a large stone castle, a rather intimidating one at that. It seems to be a mix of Ascalonian and old Ravenmark architecture, if not more accustomed for archers though. Its keep is just as impressive, it is adorned with the banners of the Halyckyj family and the colors of Malenzhia.

You enter the village of Morgwen, found amidst the sprawling meadows of central Tyvia. A palisade surrounds a handful of buildings, proudly displaying the yellow-black Moselberg banners. Above a wooden gate, a kettle-hat appears and a wrinkled member of the local militia points a crossbow towards you.

"State yer business, trav'ler."

The old man's raspy voice does not surprise you. What does is the other kettle-helmets popping up around the palisade. It seems like the village, despite its desolate location, has been heavily militarised by its new overlord.

I'll be distributing credits later this weekend once I've gotten some proper rest. I've learned not to play with game-changing commands without making sure I'm in the right mindset for it.

If anyone has an idea for another contest or challenge like this, please let me know.

I did some look into allowing lake travel a long while back, and allowing docks on lakes would be nearly a two line change to the game's code.

Allowing boats on rivers, on the other hand, would be.... comparatively intensive. I'd prefer not to make them just thin strips of a new biome, because I'd likely have to rework how bridges work. There are a few things I'd like to do that would involve larger, strategy affecting constructions, but that's a bit down the line. I mention them because they involve me figuring out how to better work with PostGIS functions and ensuring the game interprets user inputs correctly. PostGIS, for what it's worth, is what the game uses to interface is with it's GIS mapping data. There are some functions in PostGIS that let you do some pretty cool things, but getting them in a user-editable state will be... a process.

Alright everybody, I'm here to challenge you all to use that fancy new description system we have on all those places you've only been able to describe in roleplays before this--that's right, I want you to describe those settlements!

This will be purely determined by which descriptions I like best, but I will reward 500 credits to whomever does the best "Single Estate Description", 300 credits to the runner up, and 200 credits to the third best.

I am also toying with a categories based on realm-wide consistency/cohesiveness. Consider that a hint.

Removing old roads shouldn't be a hard add, but I'd have to look at it.

Towers and docks might be converted to full fledged places. I was toying with it at one point, certainly. Technically speaking, the game already understands that Places can have soldiers garrison them. It'll probably be a bit before I come back to places though.

That said, I have udpated the TODO post with a bunch of stuff about sieges.

So, after realizing that trying to do a big massive update was a bad idea, I stripped out all the unfinished bits, finished all the easily finishable bits, and packaged it all up for release.

Might & Fealty is now on version 1.1.0.0, which includes a number of new features for realms, characters, settlements, and more:

Characters--Characters are no longer restricted to heterosexual relationships. This is a setting that must be enabled, in the characters setting menu though, as this game is loosely based off medieval society.--Validation of character suicide form is now performed server side as well as client side. -- Finishing one of Tom's TODOs.--Character suicide screen now lets you edit the death message, and redirects you to view the character page of the fallen upon submit. -- Finishing one of Tom's TODOs.--It is now possible to retire a character. In other words, you can remove them from play without killing them.--Retired characters get to have a retirement background field, explaining why they retired or what they're doing in their retirement.--It is also possible to un-retire characters, bringing them back into regular play, after a bit.--Prisoners now properly and fully affect travel speeds. They also slow down travel overall, as transporting prisoners is not routine travel.--Account character list now sorts unplaced characters first and retired characters just before the dead characters.

Conversations--Realm conversations will now identify themselves as a realm conversation when read.--Character & message summary unread conversation listing will now identify which realm a conversation is part of, if any.

Description Manager (Back-end Service)--Added the Description Manager for tracking historical descriptions, linking them to who made them, when, and for what thing.--So simple and useful, I convinced the BM'ers they should use it too.

Realms--Realms can now designate a capital.--Realm Positions will now sort between active and retired on the position management page, letting you see at a glance which ones are currently in use.--Realms can now be abolished. If sovereign, all sub-realms/estates become independent. If not, all subrealms/estates move up a level.--Realm descriptions are now handled by the Description Manager.--Realms can now be abolished. Handle with care.

Settlements--New buildings: Apothecary, Arena, Dockyard, Moats, Guild District, Guild Square, Quarry, Race Track, Royal Seat, Warehouse, Regional Seat, Local Seat, Imperial Seat.--New permissions: "Create Place Inside" and "Create Place Outside"--Settlements now display their realm when select on the map, and their top-level realm if that is different.--The game will now inform you of existing militia and recruits when trying to train more.--Settlements now have user-editable descriptions, handled by the Description Manager.

User Experience--New players are no longer able to place new characters directly on the map. Knight offers are now more important.--Invalid credentials on login attempt will no longer dump database info.--(Shorter) Announcements will now display on login page/box.